Anticipating High-Speed Broadband Penetration: A Multi-Country Pre-Launch Forecasting Study

The objective of this study is to develop a new approach for pre-launch forecasting of the highspeed broadband diffusion among European community countries. However, producing such forecasts is a complex and challenging task mainly provided that past time series data concerning the relative telecom services are unavailable. Besides, multiple factors can affect adoptions such as customer heterogeneity as well as macro-economic and technological conditions. So, a multicountry method that incorporates well known diffusion models is proposed. By econometric assistance, our approach aims to capture more reliable projections in cases where the penetration is extremely immature due to lack of data. Concerning the broadband penetration in terms of download speed, rates as 100 Mbps or more seems to be mature in most countries. However, even for countries as Sweden and Romania, where penetration reached too high in downlink category (1000 Mbps or more), safe and accurate predictions cannot be deployed, as the diffusion of innovation theory argues that the level of penetration must be at least above the turning point. This area of research is important for telecom operators, as the overestimating of the demand can lead to excess inventory, while an underestimation can incurs significant opportunity costs and reduced market share.